Demographics of Japan
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As of May 2008, Japan's population is around 127.7 million[1], making it the world's tenth most populated country. Its size can be attributed to fast growth rates experienced during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However more recently Japan has been experiencing net population loss, due to falling birth rates and almost no net immigration. Japan is also noted for ethnic homogeneity, high population densities and for having one of the highest life expectancies in the world, at 81.25 years of age as of 2006.[2]
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[edit] Urban distribution
Japan is an urban society with only about 5% of the labor force engaged in agriculture. Many farmers supplement their income with part-time jobs in nearby towns and cities. About 80 million of the urban population is heavily concentrated on the Pacific shore of Honshū. Metropolitan Tokyo-Yokohama, with 35,000,000 people, is the world's most populous city. Japan faces the same problems that confront urban industrialized societies throughout the world: over-crowded cities, congested highways, air pollution, and rising juvenile delinquency, though often at much lower rates than in Africa, North America, and elsewhere.[citation needed]
[edit] Languages
Japanese society of Yamato people is linguistically homogeneous with small populations of Koreans (0.6 million), Chinese/Taiwanese (0.5 million), Brazilians (300,000, many of whom are ethnically Japanese), and Filipino (245,518 some being Japanese Filipino; children of Japanese and Filipino parentage).[3] Japan has indigenous minority groups such as the Ainu and Ryukyuans and social minority groups like the burakumin.
Japanese citizenship is conferred jus sanguinis, and monolingual Japanese-speaking minorities often reside in Japan for generations under permanent residency status without acquiring citizenship in their country of birth, although legally they are allowed to do so. Some 10,000 Zainichi Koreans naturalize every year. Approximately 98.6% of the population is pure Japanese (though technically this figure includes all naturalized people regardless of race) unheard of for a first world country — and 99% of the population speak Japanese as their first language.
[edit] Birth rate
In February 2007, most demographers and the Japanese government announced the first significant rise in the national birth rate in 40 years took place in 2006. The nation had an estimated 33,500 new births that year, a sign of a small but suitable rise in the Japanese population, held as one of the fastest aging and least growing in the developed world.[citation needed] The general concern on a shrinking population in the next 50 years puts a strain in Japanese economic growth and social stability, as some demographers argued that Japan is no longer a very crowded country in terms of Japan's high population density.[citation needed]
[edit] Population density
Japan's population density is 339 persons per square kilometer according to the United Nations World Populations Prospects Report as of July 2005. It ranks 32nd in a list of countries by population density, ranking directly above India (336 per km²) and directly below Belgium (341 per km²). Between 1955 and 1989, land prices in the six largest cities increased 15,000% (+12% a year). Urban land prices generally increased 40% from 1980 to 1987; in the six largest cities, the price of land doubled over that period. For many families, this trend put housing in central cities out of reach. The result was lengthy commutes for many workers; daily commutes of two hours each way are not uncommon in the Tokyo area. Since about the year 2000, after a decade of declining land prices, residents have been moving back into central city areas (especially Tokyo's 23 wards), as evidenced by 2005 census figures. Despite the large amount of forested land in Japan, parks in cities are smaller and scarcer than in major West European or North American cities, which average 10 times the amount of parkland per inhabitant.
National and regional governments devote resources to making regional cities and rural areas more attractive by developing transportation networks, social services, industry, and educational institutions in attempts to decentralize settlement and improve the quality of life. Nevertheless, major cities, especially Tokyo,Yokohama and Chiba and, to a lesser extent, Kyoto,Osaka and Kobe, remain attractive to young people seeking education and jobs.[citation needed]
[edit] Aging
Like other postindustrial countries, Japan faces the benefits as well as potential drawbacks associated with an aging population. While young populations such as those in sub-saharan Africa inevitably face problems of crime, poverty, and underdevelopment, older populations enjoy a much higher quality of life. In 1989, only 11.6% of the population was 65 years or older, but projections were that 25.6% would be in that age category by 2030. However, those estimates now seem low given that 21.2% (as of April 2007) are already 65 and over, now the world's highest. The change will have taken place in a shorter span of time than in any other country.
This aging of the population was brought about by a combination of low fertility and high life expectancies (i.e. low mortality). In 1993 the birth rate was estimated at 10.3 per 1,000 population, and the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime has been fewer than two since the late 1970s (the average number was estimated at 1.5 in 1993). Family planning was nearly universal, with condoms and legal abortions the main forms of birth control. A number of factors contributed to the trend toward small families: high education, devotion to raising healthy children, late marriage, increased participation of women in the labor force, small living spaces, education about the problems of overpopulation, and the high costs of child education. Life expectancies at birth, 76.4 years for males and 82.2 years for women in 1993, were the highest in the world. (The expected life span at the end of World War II, for both males and females, was 50 years.) The mortality rate in 1993 was estimated at 7.2 per 1,000 population. The leading causes of death are cancer, heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease, a pattern common to postindustrial societies.
Public policy, the media, and discussions with private citizens revealed a high level of concern for the implications of one in four persons in Japan being 65 or older. By 2025 the dependency ratio (the ratio of people under age 15 plus those 65 and older to those age 15–65, indicating in a general way the ratio of the dependent population to the working population) was expected to be two dependents for every three workers. This actually a quite low dependency ratio, for example, Uganda has 1.3 dependents for every one worker. The aging of the population was already becoming evident in the aging of the labor force and the shortage of young workers in the late-1980s, with potential impacts on employment practices, wages and benefits, and the roles of women in the labor force. The increasing proportion of elderly people also had a major impact on government spending. Millions of dollars are saved every year on education and on health care and welfare for children. As recently as the early-1970s, social expenditures amounted to only about 6% of Japan's national income. In 1992 that portion of the national budget was 18%, and it was expected that by 2025, 27% of national income would be spent on social welfare.
In addition, the median age of the elderly population was rising in the late 1980s. The proportion of people age 65–85 was expected to increase from 6% in 1985 to 15% in 2025. Because the incidence of chronic disease increases with age, the health care and pension systems are expected to come under severe strain. In the mid-1980s the government began to reevaluate the relative burdens of government and the private sector in health care and pensions, and it established policies to control government costs in these programs. Recognizing the lower probability that an elderly person will be residing with an adult child and the higher probability of any daughter or daughter-in-law's participation in the paid labor force, the government encouraged establishment of nursing homes, day-care facilities for the elderly, and home health programs. Longer life spans are altering relations between spouses and across generations, creating new government responsibilities, and changing virtually all aspects of social life.
[edit] Migration
[edit] Internal migration
Between 6 million and 7 million people moved their residences each year during the 1980s. About 50% of these moves were within the same prefecture; the others were relocations from one prefecture to another. During Japan's economic development in the twentieth century, and especially during the 1950s and 1960s, migration was characterized by urbanization as people from rural areas in increasing numbers moved to the larger metropolitan areas in search of better jobs and education. Out-migration from rural prefectures continued in the late 1980s, but more slowly than in previous decades.
In the 1980s, government policy provided support for new urban development away from the large cities, particularly Tokyo, and assisted regional cities to attract